The present invention relates to a display device or a liquid crystal display device, and more particularly to a liquid crystal display device having a curved display screen.
Thanks to several characteristics of a liquid crystal display device such as the reduction of thickness of the display device and the reduction of weight of the display device, a demand for a liquid crystal display device has been spreading to various applications ranging a computer display, a mobile phone terminal or the like to a television receiver set. It is also one of the characteristics of the liquid crystal display device that the liquid crystal display device has a planar screen.
On the other hand, from a viewpoint that the thickness of the liquid crystal display device can be reduced, the development for making use of the liquid crystal display device as a flexible display has been in progress. An example of such development is described in H. SATO et. al. “A4-Sized LCDs with Flexible Light Guide Plate” International Display Workshop (IDW) 06 (Non-patent document 1). According to this non-patent document 1, a liquid crystal display panel is constituted such that polymer-dispersion type ferroelectric liquid crystal is sandwiched between two plastic substrates and a gap is held between the substrates using polymer support columns. In this case, it is also necessary to make a backlight flexible. In non-patent document 1, the backlight is realized by arranging LEDs on a side of a flexible light guide plate.